Studying Go in China

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 10:18 pm

Thanks for the comments. SamT: I haven't ordered anything from amazon.cn yet, so I can't really help you on that front. Have you tried asking a local supplier of go books whether they can order it? In the US, I've only ordered from Yellow Mountain Imports before. For people in Europe, try sending an email to Go Webshop Keima. Both suppliers were very quick to answer my questions.

Today I played my first game at 3 stones. As was to be expected, the gloves are coming off:

I did around 80 problems (40 tesuji and 40 life and death) yesterday, as well as a review of one space low pincer joseki and some more 5-3 point joseki. Tesuji problems are getting a bit more difficult now. I'm currently working my way through Lee Chang-Ho Tesuji vol.5. It's not the moves themselves (most are very easy to spot), but I sometimes make mistakes in putting them together in the right order.

One of the problems I didn't solve yesterday:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$c Black to play $$ | . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . , . . . . . , $$ | . . X . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . X X . . . . . . . $$ | . O X O O . . . . . $$ | . O O X . O . . . , $$ | . . O X X X . O . . $$ | . O O O X . . . . . $$ | . . . X . . . . . . $$ ----------------------[/go]

I expect to be done with my 1200 life and death problem book in at most two more days.

Knotwilg · Post by **Knotwilg** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 2:04 am

One can't help but admire a move like White 128, killing an eye while finishing off another big group too.

The mistake in the joseki is also a mistake in the basics. Giving white a turtle shape in exchange for an eyeless string can't be good. One must resist here and draw out these stones, even when fearing a large scale attack on the big chain. If you'd lose that fight, then at least you have put up a fight (wei qi) and also White will have to work for the capture, so that you should get some compensation on the outside.

Other mistakes were very hard to avoid in my opinion. Especially #7 & #8 "slow/cowardly move" vs #9 "overplay". This is already a high level of play and analysis.

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:13 am

I really love how these teaching games play out, there is a lot to learn.

After reading your post about how Yan Laoshi treats the different handicap games, I tried to follow this in my own handicap games. It's really hard though ^^
My judgement (and play in general) is obviously not good enough and while I don't try to win handicap games by any means necessary anymore, I find it hard to resign and then point out, why I think my opponent played good enough to justify this.

I guess it has a lot to do with how you think a certain handicap should be played.
Recently I played a 7H game and my opponent divided White's stones reasonably well but then frequently forget about defending his stones. At the end Black had twice as many groups on the board than White. I was glad that he was not afraid to attack but overall his stones did not work together (fun fact: at the end he had six groups. Meaning, almost every handicap stone got cut off).
For me, cutting White's and connecting Black's stones is the primary goal in such high handicap games. So I felt resigning was not right.

post scriptum: The answer to the problem is really hard to find on your own. But if you saw it once, you will always remember because it is so whacky : D
I like it very much, though, because it is one of the Joseki-gone-bad-problems, if I remember correctly.

Knotwilg · Post by **Knotwilg** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:51 am

SoDesuNe wrote: After reading your post about how Yan Laoshi treats the different handicap games, I tried to follow this in my own handicap games. It's really hard though

Perhaps the lesson to learn is to play teaching games with a smaller handicap than would be required for equal winning probability. Then you can let Black off the hook and allow them to win the game if they play reasonably well. On the other hand this might even be easier with high handicap.

I don't know about the resigning though. I feel it gives a false image to the student that merely playing good opening and early middle game is sufficient to earn you a victory, while a lot happens in the endgame and late middle game. In teaching programs the positive feedback of winning on your own account is often substituted by the teacher's approval. Then when the teacher is gone, you're on your own and suddenly the positive feedback must come from winning, which you haven't really learnt through all that kind resigning.

I do of course understand that a teacher cannot go through the motions of moves 100-250 in every teaching game. That's why it is important I think to complement a teaching program with games against peers, as seems to be Hushfield's case.

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 12:26 am

The answer to yesterday's tesuji problem:

I agree with Knotwilg on the teaching game handicap: playing reduced handicap is a good idea, but always rewarding your student with a resignation is not. In fact, the reason Yan Laoshi does this with the foreign students is because he wants to train our fundamentals like direction of play above all else. We have limited time with him, after all. With local students that commit to longer study programmes, Yan Laoshi doesn't do this nearly as much. With the same student that was playing the rotational symmetrical 3-4 point handicap, he's now keeping the game close until endgame, and trains her on counting and playing the biggest points first. If she makes only a few mistakes in endgame, he will show no mercy there and finish the game. After the game review, she has to do 9x9 and sometimes 13x13 endgame problems, categorizing moves from big to small and double sente to gote.

In the review of my last teaching game with Yan Laoshi, I showed a variation in the upper left corner, and called it a 5-4 joseki. This is partly the result of both people that speak Chinese already having left. We get the most important points of a review, but it's more difficult to get long explanations now. After studying the joseki variations for a large knight's move in response to an approach to the 5-4 point, I found that the move I played is not joseki at all. It's an overplay. My apologies for the earlier mix-up. For those interested, I converted the 5 pages from our joseki book (p.716-721 for those who own the book) into the sgf below. It includes both joseki variations, as well as under- and overplays and their refutations.

I'll post today's games when I get both of them reviewed.

Knotwilg · Post by **Knotwilg** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 2:19 am

I'll fix the pages at http://senseis.xmp.net/?45Point43ApproachOgeima if I find the time. Any potential copyright issues?

Shaddy · Post by **Shaddy** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 8:34 am

That tesuji problem is one of the most beautiful things I've seen in this game. I thought I was dreaming the first time I solved it.

ez4u · Post by **ez4u** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 4:22 pm

Knotwilg wrote:I'll fix the pages at http://senseis.xmp.net/?45Point43ApproachOgeima if I find the time. Any potential copyright issues?

Ha! Ha! Ha! That's a good one.

Or are you seriously concerned about all the joseki content 'sourced' from Ishida? ;-)

Knotwilg · Post by **Knotwilg** » Sat Aug 09, 2014 2:23 am

I don't own the place. I take responsibility for my own contributions. I was never involved in copying the vault of names from GoGoD or joseki from Ishida/Kogo. At the time we've argued a lot about it and I wasn't too happy with the course taken. I did transfer the Gokyo Shumyo version by Hashimoto Utaro to Sensei's and IIRC the problems were considered to be in the public domain, while the solutions were either found by SL members or referenced as Hashimoto's.

So, in the same spirit, I'm asking this question. But I'm glad it gave you a moment of laughter.

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Sat Aug 09, 2014 4:36 am

Knotwilg: while I assume joseki would fall under public domain (if even problems do), I'm not sure about all the specific diagrams explaining refutations of improper moves. Perhaps quote those as being the work of 廖渝生 (Liao Yu Sheng), the author of 围棋定式大全 (WeiQi DingShi DaQuan) (ISBN-9787536458857).

While there were almost no kids at School Stairs, School Pink Stones seems to be doing well for itself during summer. The 2-week recess was used to paint the walls, both inside and outside, and it has been cleaned quite thoroughly. Since a new semester just started at the school, there are a lot of new kids in our class. Many of these appear to be first-time students of Yan Laoshi. They've been assigned the same tesuji and joseki book as us. I played two of the new kids yesterday and today, and found - perhaps unsurprisingly - they are not yet at the same level of the kids that were here before them. I won all four games, but played really poorly.

In yesterday's first game my opponent made a pretty big mistake in the opening, and then lost all sense of direction for a couple of moves. I took advantage and had a lead which should have been comfortable. I should learn to play solid and thick moves if this happens again. I didn't, making the game closer than it should have been.

The second game of the day was played with a 9-year old girl who's new to the school. When I noticed a mistake in joseki, I quickly went from trying to punish the mistake to overplaying. I was not punished, but should have been. When I realized I was being a bully on the board, I let a second white group make easy life, and guided my opponent towards the big points in the endgame.

Today I played both kids again. Instead of slowing down, I played even faster. This resulted in a big mistake in reading early in the first game.

In the second game, I played almost at the kid's speed (no thinking), and the result on the board was clear about who was having the better end of that deal. When I noticed I wasn't doing so well against the little girl I beat by over 40 points yesterday, I overplayed big-time. In the end the game became really close, and I managed to sneak my way towards a close win.

After the review, I went over the game once more with Liu Jia Yi, and highlighted why her moves were good and mine bad. Also, she has gained the rights to all snacks I receive from Yan Laoshi.

Except for the losses against the three 5-dan opponents, all of my games this week have left a bit of a foul aftertaste. It doesn't feel good to win when you know you played a poor game. Playing stronger opponents forces me to look for better moves. But why does playing weaker opponents lure me into playing worse? I should work on playing a more consistent game.

Because we still study go most of the day on our free days, I feared that the problem with this week's games may be non-go related: I need some time off. I ditched my problems today, played some browser games, went out for basketball and did absolutely nothing productive. Right now me and my room mate are both lying in opposite corners of the room, and the AC remote is right in the middle of said room. Neither of us can reach it from our beds, and it doesn't look like either one is getting up soon. Forsti: if you're reading this: I can do this all day, man. I'm not getting that remote.

Rowen · Post by **Rowen** » Sat Aug 09, 2014 6:01 pm

Thanks Hushfield for this great post. I've been enjoying it a LOT. I hope to be able to look at one of my games and have enough knowledge to say what was a good move and what was a poor move. Right now, it looks a long way off.

I look forward to your next installment on this and thanks again for sharing.

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 11:43 pm

Rowen: Glad you're enjoying the study journal. While I sometimes notice that a move I played is not very good, the majority of the comments on my games come from Yan Laoshi, so I can't really take any credit for that. Don't be too concerned if you can't immediately see your mistakes after a game. Maybe try going through it with some other players?

Re-energized after a lazy afternoon and nine hours of sleep, we climbed into Yan Laoshi's van for another day at school. Yesterday was this week's last day at School Pink Stones. We discovered something quite surprising: the school is much larger than we initially thought. It's located in a block of flats, and our class (along with one other class) is located on the second floor. It turns out that what we thought was the entire school, were only the classes for the dan-level students. There's 3 more classrooms for kyu-level students, a kitchen in which we were treated to lunch (and pretty good lunch at that), better toilets and even a waiting room with a television.

My first game of the day was with a new opponent, a boy called Wukai. He's definitely the strongest of the new kids I've played so far. I finally managed to play slightly more solid than before. Though I definitely used more time, my opponent didn't rush his moves either. The game took around two hours (enough for most other kids to finish and review two games).

The second game of the day was another game with Liu Jia Yi. I was set on not playing as poorly as I had done the day before, and that resulted in the following game:

I'm suddenly noticing a marked increase in the speed with which the life and death problems are going. Tesuji problems are also going a bit better. I'm working through the mid-level tesuji from 阶梯围棋综合棋力测试:手筋分册. One month ago I couldn't solve a single one, now I'm getting around 50% right on my first time through. Weirdly enough, I think this might be a result of the joseki study, as I recognize a lot of the joseki these problems stem from, and am faster at spotting the urgent points in the shape.

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Tue Aug 12, 2014 12:57 am

Today marked the end of another school week. Tomorrow we have the day off, and the day after that is home study, including another teaching game with Yan Laoshi.

When you look at the strength of the kids at both schools, there's basically two big groups: the stronger group (5-dans) and the weaker group (3-dans and below). For more info about the ranks at our school, see this earlier post. At the start of summer I was around mid-level in the weaker group, and just managed to maintain a winning percentage. Right now, a 2-dan called Ruo Shi is probably the closest thing to a "rival" I have in the weaker group (because Shong Feng has gone AWOL). We've played 5 games so far, and I'm currently 3-2 vs him.

Yesterday's game with Ruo Shi served as a good reminder of the importance of shape, and the way playing bad shape can come back to haunt you.

Obviously, I was less than pleased. I was eager to play Ruo Shi again today.

I finally finished the "beginner" life and death problem book (围棋经典死活3600题初级). At first I was thinking of going through it again as review, but I want to push a little harder for the remaining time I have here. Therefore, I'll be moving on to the intermediate edition (围棋经典死活3600题中级) immediately. I've done the first 8 problems as a test, and even though it takes a bit longer to solve them, I got 6 of them correct.

This mentality of pushing a bit harder for my final week here should also apply to the opponents I play. Usually Yan Laoshi assigns us opponents, but I think I should be a bit more assertive in asking games from the 4-dan and 5-dan kids, on black and two stones respectively. Within the weaker group, my record was 11 wins and 1 loss this week.

Going by the results, it was a good week, and one might say I'm slowly drifting towards the upper part of the weaker group. But this week's games also highlighted lingering problems with playing poor shape. Efficiency is also something to work on. A move like Black 71 in the second game with Ruo Shi for instance, would have been better at H16. Peeping a second time there was pointless and slow. But efficiency might be something for another day. The thing my games are telling me to work on right now is thicker, better shape. Which means more tesuji and life and death problems.

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 8:29 am

Today was another day off. I recently wrote about us still studying quite a lot on free days, and because I had a spur-of-the-moment free day earlier this week, I got up at six this morning and still managed to get in around six more hours of tesuji, life and death and joseki study. That way I didn't feel guilty at all when I left the apartment after lunch and finally went on some proper exploration of the city I've been calling home for the past six weeks.

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Wuhan is the capital city of Hubei province. Around 10 million people live here. I walked around town, because that is how I prefer to travel, and it's much easier to stop to take pictures of things that interest me. Chinese traffic will get its own instalment in this study journal some time later this week, as I feel its whackiness deserves more than a single paragraph.

As one would expect from a city this size, it has absolutely everything. And then some. In a 5-hour walk I saw luxury department stores, local markets (more on those later), beautiful parks, museums (with art both contemporary and historical), zen temples, an establishment which I'm pretty sure was a bordello, a person making a monkey perform tricks, fortune tellers, a forest with plastic trees (in three different kinds: blossom, summer, autumn colours) that were all fitted with little lights so they light up at night, an army convoy, people gambling in the street, traffic accidents, turtles being sold alive, turtles living out their lives in a temple pond, and the tourist hotspot that is Wuhan's Yellow Crane Tower.

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Wuhan doesn't lose out to other places in our westernized world in its search for luxury and extravagance. It's yet more Nike, iPhones and German luxury cars. The city also seems to be growing quite fast, resulting in constant construction of high-rise apartment blocks and mega-malls that seem to advertise their exclusiveness through the size of the LED-screen advertisement above the main entrance.

I haven't really touched upon this before, but studying weiqi is something for the upper middle class here. Extra-curricular activities are a way to further distinguish yourself, and taking lessons from a pro teacher is probably too expensive for a lot of people that live and work here. Even at School Pink Stones, most of the parents pick up their kids in luxury cars.

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Speaking of wealth: I've come up with a completely unscientific way of measuring how well-off a certain neighbourhood is, which I have given a very scientific-sounding name to make up for its lacking standard in content. I call it the laowai-coefficient. "Laowai" means foreigner, and every time one hears people saying it (pointing at a foreign beard or staring for longer than five seconds also count), the neighbourhood said foreigner is currently in receives an extra point in the category "genuine/local". The current high score stands at 8. This was amassed in under twenty minutes. On my first time travelling in Asia, I was pretty shocked by the level of homogeneity of the population, but this time around I'm more used to it. Captain Obvious remarks I stick out like a sore thumb - often quite literally, as my rather modest height seems quite a bit less modest around here. People that have travelled in Asia will be familiar with the random "Hello"'s, "Hallo's" and awkward handshakes that are a result of just walking down the street, but it's kind of telling I don't think it's weird when total strangers ask if I will pose in a picture with them.

For all its high-street extravaganza, Wuhan has plenty of neighbourhoods were life isn't pure glamour. For many people wages still aren't that high. Speaking of "housing" is a form of hyperbole at times. Hygiene can be quite insufficient in both the personal kind (century-old toilets) and the commercial kind (unrefrigerated meat being assaulted by flies). But then again, none of these are unique to Wuhan. They're probably more a result of the way in which we structured our (global) societies, then they are an expression of local identity.

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 8:35 am

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About a 30-minute walk from our apartment there's a huge indoor market that sells about everything legal, and probably quite a few things not entirely legal. There's plenty of fruit available, including watermelon (I swear Wuhan is made of watermelon, I must have had ten whole watermelons since I got here, they just keep magically appearing after every meal), tiny banana's (the level of cuteness is way over 9000 in those) and the infamous durian. It's called the king of fruits and apparently smells about as appealing as the average corpse. Because all specimens we've found so far didn't have the trademark smell, we didn't get any yet. Let's hope our nose guides us to some choice durian in the coming days.

Concerning the meaty options: there's a lot of duck and pig. Nothing of the animal is wasted, so ducks are cooked and eaten beak and all, same with pigs: from snout to feet, not single piece of fat is wasted). Live crayfish and eels are also quite abundant.

Among the borderline legal items (thinking from a western perspective, I have no clue about local sales laws) one can find living turtles being sold. Also, strangely enough: chickens. Right before we got here a new law was passed, temporarily banning live chickens from being sold. I have no idea about the reasons, but as a result we've been having a lot more duck than would normally be the case. Every piece of chicken we've had so far was hamstered in advance, and hidden away in the Yan family's giant freezer. But at this particular market, I saw chickens being sold. Rather odd that I'm more certain about the chicken being illegal goods than the turtle.

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China is not a very quiet place, and this is in no small part due to all the public dancing. Mornings and evenings are favourite moments for large groups of people to gather and have outdoor dance or martial arts practice. In the picture above (taken from our balcony), you can see the neighbourhood old-timers cracking their morning taichi routines. These old ladies are wielding swords at a time of day where I'm not even confident in my ability to wield a tooth brush.

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Finally, special mentions must be given to our home court. A lot of people in this neighbourhood play basketball. At any given day there's around 6-10 people playing, but that pales in comparison to Sundays, when there's easily more than twenty people engaging in half-court tournaments. Chinese basketball is all about long distance shooting. There's not that much driving and any contact is called a foul. I prefer my game to occur in the paint, but either way it's great to have this many people to play with.

This turned into quite a long off-topic post. Tomorrow I'll be back with more go. As always, thanks for reading.

Life In 19x19

Studying Go in China

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